Should We Jail Deep Throats ...

[merh]

THE CONSTITUTION
Should We Jail Deep Throats ...
By John W. Dean
John W. Dean is a former White House counsel and author, most recently, of "Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush."

February 6, 2005

I have little doubt that one of my former Nixon White House colleagues is history's best-known anonymous source — Deep Throat. But I'll be damned if I can figure out exactly which one.

We'll all know one day very soon, however. Bob Woodward, a reporter on the team that covered the Watergate story, has advised his executive editor at the Washington Post that Throat is ill. And Ben Bradlee, former executive editor of the Post and one of the few people to whom Woodward confided his source's identity, has publicly acknowledged that he has written Throat's obituary.

When that posthumous profile reveals the secret name, it will be flash powder on the long-simmering debate about reporters' use of anonymous sources — an issue much in the news lately because my former law school classmate, Thomas F. Hogan, now the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, has been holding journalists in contempt of court for refusing to reveal their sources to a grand jury investigating the leak of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

I'm caught in the middle on this discussion. As a columnist, occasional freelancer and author of six nonfiction books, I use unidentified sources myself. In fact, I just used one. The source who informed me that Woodward leaked the news of Throat's illness to the executive editor of the Post gave me that information either on "deep background" or "off the record" (I never could get the distinction of those rules straightened out). So I apologize to my source if this information was never meant to be public, but it is a tidbit too hot to keep sitting on.


http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-sources6feb06,0,3062317,print.story?coll=la-sunday-commentary

[Babel_17]

1. Hmmm,

I guess that eliminates Pat Buchanan from the list? He looked fine last time I viewed him on TV.

Huh, now that I think about it the last time the identity of Throat seemed imminent a much lesser known name was bandied about.

I have a vague impression that it was mentioned his health wasn't all that good. Hmmm ......

[Zhade]

2. Kick

Kick

[physioex]

3. How is this LBN???

Sorry but I think this is the wrong forum....

[illuminaughty]

5. Because it is rumored that the identity will be revealed on Sunday

n/t

[physioex]

4. WOAAAAA....

I can still post. Mods must be all sleeping.... :)

[DainBramaged]

6. Should We Jail Deep Throats

If you do, liver sales will skyrocket everywhere.

[Eurobabe]

7. could it be Rhenquist???

he's ill, one foot in the grave.

[Ivote]

8. Here You Go

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1571246
:kick:

[merh]

9. Thanks for the link.

I'm sorry they moved this from LBN - the other thread about the identity of Deep Throad that got play all day yesterday needed to be countered with this.

Since it was reported in the LA Times, I figured it was news! What do I know? :shrug:

[EVDebs]

10. I'll bet it's Gordon Strachan, political aide to Haldemann

Of all the guys indicted, he never lost his law license (and today practices in Park City UT). He was probably CIA inside the Nixon WH, as was Butterfield (the leaker of the tapes), and as political aide to Haldemann was aware of who was getting political payoffs...which is where the money was going all along.

Nixon's treasury guys LaRue and Mitchell were bagmen. The $350K mentioned in the footnote in "All The President's Men" coming in from Chilean investors...take that for CIA excess $ coming back from Chile and intended for political payoffs in the US.

Either the CIA itself or Nixon was doing the payoffs. With the threat of losing the CIA itself under the Huston Plan, CIA director Helms must have said to himself..Hmmm, let's hoist Nixon on his own petard.

Oh btw, Deep Throat is just a literary device used to distract attention from the real motives of all concerned. Look closer at Sen Robert F. Bennett (of the Mullen & Co. CIA domestic front company with the burglars etc.) and you'll see what I mean
www.metroactive.com/papers/ sonoma/07.03.97/scoop-9727.html
also, "Secret Agenda" by Jim Hougan lets us in on Lt. j.g. Woodwards' true employer.